Tag: Business and finance

THE bond market used to be the prime exhibit for those predicting low long-term economic growth. In the summer of 2016 the ten-year Treasury yield briefly dipped below 1.5%, as expectations for growth and inflation sagged. Things have changed. Earlier this year the ten-year yield briefly went higher than 2.9%. Even after recent share-price gyrations, it remains around 2.8%, well up since the start of 2018. The rebounding interest rate partly reflects higher confidence in global growth. Inevitably, a new set of pessimists now voice a fresh worry: that bond yields might go on rising for less welcome reasons.

They point to three threats. The first is monetary policy. The Federal Reserve has raised short-term interest rates by 1.5 percentage points since December 2015. At their March meeting, rate-setters slightly upgraded forecasts of how far rates should eventually rise. Last October the Fed began shrinking its $4.5trn portfolio of assets, mostly government debt, amassed since the start of…Continue reading

JING ZHAO’S main occupation is translating Latin classics into Chinese. He runs a small think-tank, the US-Japan-China Comparative Policy Research Institute. He lives off rents from property bought cheaply after the financial crisis. But this quiet, intellectual California resident has a surprising sideline: submitting proposals to be voted on by the shareholders of companies in which he owns small stakes. That makes him part of a movement that is forcing management at some of the world’s biggest firms to consider not just profitability but broad shifts in social attitudes.

The annual meetings of America’s listed companies, usually held between February and June, have come to constitute “proxy season”—so-called because shareholders need not cast their votes in person. This year proposals from Mr Zhao will be on the ballot at four giant firms. He wants Apple to create a human-rights committee, citing its decision last year to bow to Chinese censorship by removing hundreds of…Continue reading

OVER the past decade economists have been intensely scrutinised for their intellectual failings in the run-up to the 2007-08 financial crisis. Yet had the recession that followed been more severe—wiping a quarter off the GDP of every advanced economy, say—those countries would still have ended up four times as rich per person, in purchasing-power terms, as developing countries are now, and more than ten times as rich as sub-Saharan ones. Robert Lucas, a Nobel prizewinning economist, once wrote that after you have started to think about the gap between poor and rich countries it is hard to think about anything else. Economists understand even less about economic growth than about business cycles. But the profession has done too little to address this failure or to understand its implications.

Economists have precious few hard facts about growth. They know that sustained growth in GDP per person only started in the 18th century. They know that countries can become rich only by growing steadily over…Continue reading

A YEAR ago this week, David Dao went from being an unknown pulmonologist to a household name. Dr Dao had boarded a flight from Chicago to Louisville when the United Airlines crew announced that four passengers would have to leave to make room for additional staff. Three passengers accepted enticements to switch to a different flight, but Dr Dao, who said he had patients to see, refused to give up his seat. Eventually, he was dragged down the aisle by airport security, gaining a bloody face in the process and a national reputation as a consumer champion after videos and photos of the incident went viral. (One of the security officers, who was fired after the event, is suing the city’s airport authority, claiming he hadn’t been adequately trained.)  

The news was a public-relations disaster for United. A Continue reading

THE impact of technology on the economy is one of the most-debated issues of the moment, whether it is the potential for automation to cause unemployment, boost long-term productivity, or widen inequality. A good deal of the annual Barclays Equity-Gilt Study, published yesterday, was devoted to the subject. But one section caught my eye; the idea that technological change was making GDP a less useful measure.

The report says that

When GDP was first introduced, manufacturing accounted for a large share of the core advanced economies, and the (system of national accounts) was designed primarily to measure physical production.

But the modern economy is dominated by services and

Services cover a wide range of activities and are often customised, making their basic unit of production, as well as differences in quality and changes over time, hard to define

Furthermore, the report points out that

Digitised goods or services are often free: and without an…Continue reading

JEREMY Grantham is an investor with 50 years of experience in the markets who is known for his caution about the outlook for long-term returns (he works for the GMO fund management group). But he caused a stir earlier this year when he said the chances were high of a melt-up in the markets this year. 

Buttonwood caught up with him when he visited London this week and asked whether the recent volatility had changed his view. He does think that the odds of a melt-up have fallen. The acceleration stage of a bull market, as in 1928 and 1999, tends to be smooth and quick. The trade tensions evoked by President Trump could be very damaging. He thinks that it is likely that, in five years, the American market may be 20% lower but this will not necessarily be via a sharp crash but through a series of advances and retreats. 

The reason that the market has been doing well until now is the combination of low inflation and high profits; that…Continue reading

WITH their geographical advantage for connecting flights between far-flung places, there is plenty to keep the airlines of the Gulf countries busy. Yet Bahrain’s skies are nearly empty compared with its neighbours. About 9m passengers used its airport last year, far fewer than the 88m for Dubai, 37m for Qatar and 26m for Abu Dhabi. The difference is striking given that Gulf Air, Bahrain’s flag carrier, was for decades the most prestigious airline in the Middle East. In its heyday in the 1970s and early 1980s, none of its three neighbours even had national airlines.

Geopolitics was the driving force behind Gulf Air’s rise and fall. During the 19th century, Bahrain was a protectorate of the British empire and the busiest trading centre in the Gulf. In the 1950s, its strategic importance motivated British Overseas Airways Corporation, at the time Britain’s flag carrier, to become a major shareholder in Gulf Aviation, the island’s fledgling local airline. By…Continue reading